A Day in the West Bank, part 2

I wrote this blog post as part of a larger series of blogs by myself and my fellow students on a study abroad trip to Israel and Palestine in January 2020, where we learned about water usage, wastewater treatment, environmental engineering and inequality, and the oppression of Palestine through the lens of environmental control. 

At the second farm we visited, our bus trundled into a small village along a muddy path, and we left the vehicle we were immediately greeted by the giggles and shouts of hello from a group of children. They were so pleased to have visitors, it seemed, and followed us around in a pack during the whole of tour. First we were served tiny cups of coffee in a comfortable living room with cozy couches and a gleaming marble floor by the leaders of the village, three men who work with PWEG and Clive on water projects on their farm. Then we went to go look at the water filtration system, followed of course by the band of merry children. They were on school holiday, I. explained, and he added to me, “they are all cousins somehow,”; the village is mainly comprised of two brothers, their wives, children, and grand-children.

I thought of these children throughout the day. We sped past low date palms, clearly Palestinian because they are unable to grow them higher due to water and technological limitations, which were immediately bordered by high, lush date farms, green fields, and whitewashed walls that surrounded verdant communities. These green oases in the desert are settlements, land used by Jewish people who believe their birthright is the Biblical lands of Judea and Samaria, which happen to be in the West Bank territories. Settlements are fed by irrigated water in purple pipes, managed by the Israeli government, but Palestinian lands are noticeably drier, sandy and dusty. 

One settlement stands out in my mind: high on a hill, surrounded by a wall, with red-roofed homes and green bushes rising up to the sky. The settlement was starkly contrasted to the desert around and below it. I thought about what it must be like to be an Israeli child, driven to and from school, the grocery store, to Jerusalem and on other trips, back up to a home on a hill, in a neighborhood surrounded by a wall and protected by armed guards in the Israeli Defense Force. What messages does that send you, as a child, about the people who live outside this land, from whom you are being defended? What does it tell you about whom to fear, and what to do about it? And I thought about Palestinian children, the children who had followed us laughingly throughout their village. What does it say to you, as a child of the West Bank, that your neighbors live high on a hill, in a green land out of your reach, protected by armed guards with the power to kill? what will this do to children of Israel and Palestine for generations to come, what intergenerational trauma is being wrought by the environmental situations that their government encourages and maintains? The United States is just beginning to answer for its long legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws, and we have a long road of reconciliation, reparation, justice, and healing ahead of us. It is painful to think that this is a country who could learn from our mistakes, and many others, and avert these terrible injustices and yet is flying headlong along a continued path of pain and hatred.

There is a temptation when thinking about oppressed and impoverished peoples to define them by their victimhood, but our day at H.’s farm and the farm in Marj Al Ghazal (owned and run by two brothers who are de facto leaders of their village) gave us the opportunity to understand the deep strength and power of Palestinians. Spending a day – even just one day – in the West Bank gave us as learners many multi-colored shades of understanding of the history, culture, and experiences of the communities that reside here. 

I was still full of thought as, later that night, we walked through the Old City of Jerusalem. It is clean and the smooth lightrail system hums and chimes as it traverses wide stone boulevards. It was a far cry from the dusty roads and the blue concrete bus shelter. We must have walked past dozens of Hasidic Jews as we wandered Jerusalem, and I thought again, as I have often on this trip, about the long history of persecution and strength that the Jewish people have faced and overcome. Israel, despite the cruel and messy realities of its government, is a beautiful, sacred place. The smooth stones of the old city hold thousands of years of human stories. 

Jewish people finally have a place to proudly share their holy faith with each other and teach the world about their spiritual history. In the Old City particularly, they do it alongside Muslims and Christians, more or less without overt conflict most of the time. After the horrors of the Inquisition, the pogroms, the Holocaust, after the countless times Jews have been expelled from their homes for their beliefs and still managed to keep their beautiful faith at the center of their hearts, who is to deny them this chance at establishing a community?

And yet, when I meet Palestinians, whose strength is in stark contrast to the limited resources they are allocated by the Israeli government, it is clear in my heart that they too must be allowed to exercise their freedom of spirituality and cultural expression. They have, just like the Jews were for so long, been expelled from their homes and are under occupation of a ruling power. It is a terrible truth in the social work profession that abused children are more likely to grow up to be abusers; this is the cyclical nature of trauma. I fear we are simply seeing this on a massive scale with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

Though I had hoped for more understanding once I traveled into the West Bank, I am simply full of more questions and heartache for this holiest of lands. These questions feel eerily similar to what worries me about my own beleaguered nation. What will current injustices and oppression do to our people and our children for years to come? What will finally force us to give environmental equality to all people and animals so that we might share natural resources and restore Mother Earth’s balance? When will we as a people learn to greet each other with a common shared language, as R. did for me, so that we might, perhaps over a shared up of tea, find the way forward, together?